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s1 {font-kerning: none}span.Apple-tab-span {white-space:pre}Transformational leaders are highly prized for their ability to motivate, inspire and make people feel good about themselves. Job satisfaction is how satisfied people are at their workplace. It is clear that people who work for transformational leaders would have higher job satisfaction compared to those who do not. Job satisfaction is important to organizations because higher job satisfaction is linked to better performance for the organization overall. It is believed that four core behaviors are what lead to this higher job satisfaction among employees who work for transformational leaders.
They are idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualized consideration. Idealized influence is about being a role model for the organization and gaining respect and admiration from followers. These leaders have strong ethics, inspire a positive vision and motivate followers live by their values and beliefs. This gains more trust in the leader and this leads to greater employee motivation to achieve company goals. Intellectual stimulation is about leader’s changing their follower’s way of thinking regarding problem solving and pushing them to find creative solutions. These leaders generate an atmosphere where outside the boxing thinking is encouraged and followers feel free to challenge their leader on ideas if they feel it’s appropriate. Transformational leaders value learning and development and instill this in their followers.
Inspirational motivation is when leaders paint a vivid picture of the future and create a sense of purpose in employees working towards company objectives. They paint this vivid picture with superior communication skills and back this picture with practical and understandable explanations which inspires employees to achieve this vision. Individualized consideration is about attending to each follower in a customized way that addresses their particular needs and talents and truly caring about them. The leader acts a mentor, develops close relationships with them, care about what they have to say and promotes their personal growth.
These four core behaviors are believed to be key in transformational leaders having followers who report significantly higher job satisfaction. Self-efficacy is defined as the self-perception an individual has on their ability to achieve goals or successfully deal with specific situations. It is believed that transformational leaders develop self-efficacious followers by setting lofty goals, encouraging their followers and truly believing in their ability to succeed. It is believed this self-efficacy created by transformational leadership leads to higher job satisfaction.
In addition, trust which can be described as the willingness to be vulnerable by putting their belief in someone else. Transformational leaders tend to be more trusted because they respect every employee. This trust in leadership is linked to higher job satisfaction. Research was conducted on all these theories using 252 participants which included: 151 women, 100 men and 1 unidentified.
Their mean age was 33.78 years with a standard deviation of 8.71 years. The participants in the study were from four different academic faculties in a non-profit Turkey university. Different questionnaires were used but all were scales. Some were 1 to 5 with 1 being not satisfied and 5 being very satisfied and others were similar but with different numbers such as 1 to 10 instead.
Transformational had a strong correlation with trust and job satisfaction and it had a moderate correlation with self-efficacy. Trust correlated strongly with job satisfaction and moderately with self-efficacy. Lastly, self-efficacy and job satisfaction were correlated moderately. This research shows that leadership style such as transformational leadership does have a great impact on job satisfaction. Developing close relationships with followers, being open to communication and showing genuine concern for others really does make a difference. Organizations would benefit in encouraging their management team to engage in transformational leadership. It will increase job satisfaction in the employees and lead to greater success for the company. It is a win-win situation.
The opposing style to transformational leadership is transactional leadership. The main objective of transactional leadership is to get employees to work hard for their wages. If they fail to do so, there will be some kind of punishment.
A transactional leader lets his employees know what the company’s objectives are and lets them know they will be rewarded for good performance. Employees are given clear instructions and have little to no voice over their work. This is the traditional style of management that primarily relies on rewards and feedback. How does job satisfaction for employees of transactional leaders compare to employees of transformational leaders? A survey research method was used to compare transformational and transactional leadership styles impact on job satisfaction. The participants were 5 professors from 43 different colleges for a total of 215 professors. One questionnaire used 7 different indicators and another used the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire. First, the null hypothesis which assumes there is no correlation between leadership style and job satisfaction is disproven.
Second, transformational leadership shows a significantly higher correlation to job satisfaction than transactional leadership. The research clearly shows that transformational leadership is superior to transactional leadership in terms of job satisfaction. If job satisfaction is important to an organization which is should be then pure transactional leadership is not the way to go. Of course, some aspects of transactional leadership are necessary but they should complement the transformational leadership principles and not be the main strategy.
